What to Do
by Lena7623
Summary: AU version of Season Three: Faith rescued her watcher from Kakistos's torture chamber, and shows up on Giles' doorstep on the run and with a badly injured Wesley in tow.


**Faith; pairing or gen; AU version of Season Three: Faith rescued her watcher from Kakistos' torture chamber, and shows up on Giles' doorstep on the run and with a badly injured Wesley in tow.**

Faith was in a panic. That showed Wesley just how bad the situation really was. He certainly felt like he was on death's door. She always played the cool and confident bad-ass woman, even when he told her that the master vampire Kakistos was known to be in their area. She just kind of brushed his concern aside at the time. And yet, he knew that she could rescue him when Kakistos and his minions kidnapped him, as long as he didn't die before she got there. It seemed as though Kakistos was saving the worst for when his number one lieutenant, Mr. Trick, brought in Faith to watch his torture and likely slow death from the injuries. It wasn't as if Kakistos had waited for Faith to be brought in to get started: Wesley's ten broken fingers and the numerous knife cuts covering his body were testimony to Kakistos's inability to wait. However, he had been more than pleased when Faith had came flying in, killing more vampires left and right than he had thought possible. If he were in a more suitable state, he would congratulate her. Instead, all he could do was weakly thank her profusely for coming for him as she carried him out the door and into the coming sunrise. She had waited for the sunrise in hopes that they wouldn't be followed.

Now, they were in a tiny hotel room outside of Boston, where Faith was trying her best to attend to his injuries, but only seemed to become more and more frustrated.

"I should have come in sooner. If I had…" Faith looked to be on the verge of tears, something that Wesley thought that he would never see.

"If you had, then we both might be trussed up and being tortured slowly until we both died." He tried to sit up, but Faith only gently held him down. If he sat up, he might bleed more. "You did the right thing by waiting until near dawn. You were magnificent in there."

Faith let out a shaky sigh. "What do we do now? As soon as Kakistos figures out where we are, he'll just come for us again, won't he?"

"Yes," Wesley admitted, "but I have an idea. I think that it's time for us to visit the other slayer in Sunnydale, California." Hopefully they would be willing to help.

Faith thought that the drive would never end. To get them to Sunnydale, she had hotwired a car for them. Wesley had put up a weak protest, but he wasn't in any condition to really complain about her choice in their mode of transportation. What she would have preferred to do was take him to a hospital, but Wesley insisted that the important thing to do was to go and see a Mr. Giles and Buffy Summers in Sunnydale. Buffy was supposed to be the wicked number one Slayer, but what kind of bad-ass Slayer had a name like Buffy? It sounded like the name of a cheerleader in Faith's opinion.

Wesley wasn't doing so good, either. He had this very big gash in his side that kept oozing blood. Faith kept bandaging it up, but it wasn't healing right. Wesley kept mumbling something about it maybe being mystical, which put Faith even more out of her league. She was good at killing stuff, but she couldn't keep a cactus alive, much less an entire human being. She just hoped that this Mr. Giles would be able to do something.

When they reached Sunnydale, Faith and Wesley checked into a hotel and, against Faith's wishes, Wesley insisted that she go right away to Mr. Giles. She didn't want to leave Wesley alone in a hotel. Vampires could enter hotels, and Wesley was in no condition to defend himself. Still, he insisted that she go right now, while it was daylight outside. After surrounding him with every cross that she could find, she set out for Sunnydale High School, where Wesley said that Mr. Giles was.

For a town that was full of vampires and other demons, Sunnydale High School had no security to speak of. Of course, maybe the reason that no one questioned who she was was because she was the right age to be a high school student. Of course, she got her GED months ago, so school wasn't necessary for her anymore. She actually preferred it that way. Faith never had the patience for school anyway.

When she walked into the library, it was empty except for a lone man standing behind the desk, engrossed in a book. From outward appearances, Faith had to guess that he was Mr. Giles. He looked like a slightly older version than her Watcher; everything from the tweed to the glasses screamed 'Watcher' to her. It took a closer inspection to see the muscles underneath the white button-up shirt. She could also spy the weapons that were locked away in a cage across the room. Yeah, this was the right guy, alright.

"Hey, are you Rupert Giles?" When he looked up at her, she didn't even give him a chance to respond. Something in her gut just told her that it was him, and her gut was hardly ever wrong. "I'm in a tight situation here. I've got my Watcher with me, and he's in wicked bad shape." She looked down at her feet for a second and bit her lip. She was trying to push back the tears that were threatening to come forth. Wes was all she had and, if this guy couldn't fix what was wrong with him, then she was fucked and she knew it. "His wounds keep bleeding. I don't know why. I keep patching them up but they just keep bleeding."

"Where is he now?" His voice made her look back up at him. He had moved from behind the desk to about a foot from where she stood. She realized that she hadn't even moved from the doorway.

"He's…well, just follow me." She turned and walked back out of the door, only looking back once to make sure that he was following her.

Rupert Giles had been told about the Boston Slayer and her Watcher. This time the Council had the intelligence to inform him after she had been called and who had been assigned to her. He had even been sent a photograph of each of them, just in case one ever showed up, along with a little information about each of them. Now he was incredibly thankful of the Council's foresight, because otherwise he would have been very confused by the teenager who had shown up in his library.

He ended up driving the both of them to the motel that the girl had told him about. Once she led him inside of the motel room, he could see why the girl was so distressed. He had met Wesley Wyndam-Pryce once or twice before, and was well acquainted with his father. Pryce had always looked to him like he had a stick shoved a little too far up his arse, but the man propped up on the bed before him was nothing like he had appeared a few years ago when he had met him.

"We need to get you to a hospital," Giles said, trying to keep calm at the injuries that he saw before him. The man was lucky to still be alive.

"No," Wesley coughed, and shook his head. "Anyone can enter a hospital. It's not safe."

"I kept saying that he should go to a hospital, too, but he won't listen to me, either." Faith looked over at Giles. "Will you please help?"

"If you won't go to a hospital, then you certainly can't stay here," Giles replied. "Anyone can enter a hotel as well." With some help from Faith, Giles managed to get Wesley into the car 

without hurting him further and drove the two of them to his home. At least there, no one was going to be entering the building at their leisure.

Once they helped Wesley into his home and onto his couch, Giles took apart the bandaging that covered the deep gash on his side. "He cut me….with some sort of sacrificial knife," Wesley said as Giles cleaned the wound. "It's not healing properly."

"Do you remember what the knife looked like?" Giles asked.

Faith answered that one. "If it's the one that I sliced Kakistos's face open with, then it's really old looking and it has ancient Greek symbols on it." With a nod from Wesley to confirm Faith's report, Giles finished up doing as much as he could with the wound at the moment.

"It sounds like a ritually cursed dagger," Giles said, walking over to his bookshelf and started looking through the titles for the right one on ancient master vampires. He remembered that the entry on Kakistos mentioned something about a dagger that he liked to use on victims. After finding the book that he wanted, he pulled it from the shelf and flipped it open. "Yes….Kakistos has a dagger that he likes to use for special occasions. He had a witch ritually curse it hundreds of years ago just for him."

"Can you….can you fix this?" Faith asked him. Giles looked up at her and could see the pleading in her eyes. From what little he knew about her from the file that the Watcher's Council had sent him, she didn't have any family to speak of. Her father died in an oil rig accident when she was five and her mother had been an abusive drunk until she ran away from home at the age of fourteen. The council had found her when she was sixteen, and she had been training with Wesley for the last two years. He had to be the only real family that she had.

"It will take a ritual to 'un-curse' the wound, so to speak, but yes, I believe I can fix this." He was then practically bum rushed by Faith in a quick but tight hug.

She pulled away quickly, though, seemingly embarrassed. "Sorry about that, but thanks, you know?" She gave him a slight smile.

"You're very welcome, Faith."


End file.
